Heart Demon
by Tamashi.no.Koe
Summary: .Kirihara Akaya. This 'aiming away from the opponent's body' thing was really going to take some getting used to.
1. His Demon

**HEART DEMON**

**Chapter One: His Demon**

Kirihara walked to the wall with the piece of chalk in his hand. He pressed himself against the wall, and above the white line indicating where the net should have been, he carefully traced the shape of his body.

_"Is he a--a _monster_?"_

_"Be careful! He'll hurt you!"_

_"He's a _demon_!"_

"Shut the hell up!" Kirihara growled, giving his head a hard shake and tried to concentrate on his tracing.

_"…a--a monster?"_

_"…He'll hurt you!"_

_"…demon!"_

"Shut UP!" he yelled at the wall.

All that did was hurt his ears when the sound rebounded back to him.

The voices didn't stop.

The voices never stopped.

They were with him all the time, especially when he was doing something tennis related. Which was pretty often. And when his own head wasn't goading him, other people were.

Where else could the voices have come from?

They called him a monster, a demon. All of them.

Kirihara didn't used to really mind. In fact, he used to really enjoy his violent ways. Sometimes, in a match, crushing his opponent became more important to him than actually winning.

He used to love to do that, hurt his opponents, make them feel pain, and yet have them continue playing…so that he could hurt them some more.

He used to love seeing them tremble before him, loved to see even the strongest of them cower in helplessness and fear.

And his teammates had never stopped him. He knew, very distantly, that he made them uneasy, that they didn't really approve of his methods.

But hey, he always won. Normally, his opponents were too scared by the third or fourth game that the rest became a piece of cake.

And so he had continued, until…

_"Tennis should not be used to breed hatred."_

Until he had lost in _that_ match.

Then he knew he couldn't go on like this.

_"Tennis should not be used to breed hatred."_

Personally, Kirihara didn't give a damn as to what Fuji thought.

_"Have you seen your limit, Akaya?"_

But yes, he had seen it. He had seen his weakness, and most of all, he had felt the fear. No, the terror. The complete and utter _horror_ of knowing that the person on the other side of the net was out to get him, out to destroy him, out to crush him, tear him apart until the very sight of a tennis ball sent him running in the opposite direction, crying.

Later, of course, he figured out that Fuji had had none of those intentions, and that he'd just been imagining things.

And really, he didn't care if Fuji had a problem with him.

It was just that, now, Kirihara himself had a problem with the way he did things.

"Right." Done tracing, he pocketed the chalk and took out a tennis ball. Returning to the baseline, he struck.

"Damn." There was a small scuff mark on the wall, within the lines of the chalk, right where the person's head would have been. Kirihara cuffed himself. No, no, this wouldn't do.

Taking out another ball, he tried to focus. _Out of the chalk lines. Out of the chalk lines._ Keeping both eyes on the 'chalk person', he tossed the ball up.

"_Damn!_" The ball had landed outside of the chalk lines, all right. In fact, it had landed out of the court itself, and bounced off to a place he couldn't see.

Really, he needed more practice on this 'hitting away from the body' thing.

"Excuse me, is anyone there? There's this tennis ball--"

Kirihara turned to see a girl, about his age, holding up a ball and looking around. She was from Rikkai Dai too, he could vaguely remember. She was a volunteer at the Junior Invitational Enrichment Camp, where he was currently training.

"Yes, it's mine. Thank you--"

The girl saw him. She gasped.

Well, he couldn't really blame her. Seeing as she wasn't going to come over to him any time soon, Kirihara walked briskly towards the girl, raising his hand to take the ball. "Thanks," he said again.

When he was three paces away, the girl started shaking at the knees.

When he was two paces away, her eyes had grown wide, her mouth moving soundlessly.

When he was one pace away--well, strictly speaking, he never really got as close at one pace away from her, because she'd already dropped the ball and kicked up her heel by the time he had gotten to the spot she used to stand.

Kirihara watched the ball fall to the ground, bounce and roll away.

It was strange, seeing someone absolutely terrified of him and not feel the least bit gleeful about it.

Was he really that bad?

He slowly took out another ball, trying to forget all of it.

Tennis practice…concentrate…

_"Monster!"_

_"Demon!"_

_"Evil…"_

"AHH!"


	2. Their Demon

**Chapter Two - Their Demon**

He could tell they didn't want him there.

It was in their eyes, how they would look at him, frown, and look away as if a blank wall would have been more deserving of their attention. He saw uneasiness too, wariness and dislike. But most of them, intrepid because of their advantage in numbers, just looked down on him.

Kirihana wanted to shake them hard, yell at them until something got through their thick skulls—

Did they think that being a demon was a permanent thing?

Did the think that, being a monster, he would be like that all his life?

But no matter what he did, no matter what he said…

Everywhere he went, they looked at him in _that_ way.

Except in the tennis club.

They didn't hate him there. Maybe his senpais were forever trying to put him in his place. But Sanada, Yukimura, Kuwahara, Yanagi, Yagyuu, Niou, Marui… They cared about him more or less. At least they had always taken the trouble to keep him from going too far with his in some way.

But he hadn't thought he needed help.

The moment he smelt blood, he would forget the existed.

Until, of course, _that _match.

Losing to Seigaku had been like waking up from a wonderful dream, only to discover that it, like the world he had woken up to, was a nightmare.

"If you hurt anyone from this camp, I won't forgive you!"

Kirihana scoffed. As if Tachibana An was in any position to make threats.

It gave him a bitter taste in his mouth, though. He _had_ only been doing some self-training. He'd thought that by improving himself, he'd stand a chance of gaining everyone's respect again, when they saw that he didn't have to turn into a demon to win.

All that had done was make An corner him and as good as ask outright whether he'd been off murdering anyone.

It just didn't seem fair.

"I know you idolize your brother," he said loftily. "But if you overdo it, it gets disgusting."

He watched with a deep satisfaction as her face constricted in fury and injury. So maybe the demon in him hadn't completely gone. Kirihana wanted desperately to hurt the girl, to have her feel the way her heart contracted when those cruel, but true words reached her ears. He wanted to punish her, for her prejudice, for her narrow-minded presumptions, her stubbornness.

He enjoyed it immensely, walking away knowing that she was shaking in anger.

For a split second, at the top of the stairs, he was pleased for having infuriated her so much that she felt the need to slap him.

But then he fell, and of course he didn't feel quite so pleased.

The thing that irritated him most were not the bruises he got from the ordeal, though. Even if they did sting.

It was that the rest of the members in Ryuzaki's group endlessly bombarded _Kamio _with questions like 'Why did you do that?" regardless of Kamio's _and_ Kirihana's persistent insists that Kirihana was _not_ protecting the other boy, whom the others assumed to be the attacker.

It was like, if Kirihana happened to fall down anything, he _had_ to have been pushed by someone or the other that he had once offended.

Kirihana thought this was going a bit too far. Besides the serious implication that he had an excess of enemies--which he kind of did--it seemed that being a demon automatically made him a liar too.

He couldn't see the connection, somehow.

He didn't give the Tachibana girl away. He figured that if he told the truth about what had happened, everyone would just think of her a as heroine or something.

Instead, he walked right back out the door again and self-trained some more. Returning to his usual spot with the practice wall, Kirihana saw a lone figure standing there.

It was the girl from before, who had chanced upon his stray tennis ball. She seemed to be trying to remove the chalk marks with her finger.

"Excuse me," he hurried up to her. "Could you leave that there? I need it."

The girl whipped around, showing identical initial fright as before.

Frankly, Kirihana wanted to snap, "Oh, just cut it out. Do I _look_ like I'm going to kill you or something?" but stopped himself, thinking that she'd probably see that as some kind of threat in itself. "Did I scare you?" he forced himself to smile. "I shouldn't have jumped out like that. I'm sorry. You're from Rikkai Dai too, right? What's you're name?" She wasn't the prettiest girl he had ever seen, but her expression was open, and he thought her to be a potential friend.

The girl backed against the wall. "Why would you want to know?" she whispered.

Kirihana had to work hard to hide his annoyance. She wouldn't even tell him her _name_? What did she think he would do, use it to track her down and hurt her someday? "We're at the same camp," he pointed out patiently. "We could at least be friends--"

"_Friends?_" Her voice was high and shrill, but challenging. "You think I'd be friends with someone who does something like _that_?" She pointed at the chalk-covered wall behind her. "You're doing target practice, aren't you? You actually _practice_ aiming at your opponents?"

The whisper had risen to an outraged yell. Kirihana, though, had to laugh. He could explain this particular misunderstanding easily. But laughing, apparently, was quite the wrong thing to do. When he finally calmed down enough to do so, the girl was already ten feet away, charging off in utter disgust.

Completely flabbergasted, Kirihana could only watch her go. In his frustration, he took out a tennis ball, fixed his eyes on a random spot on the wall, and served.

For--goodness--SAKE.

He took out another.

Seriously, he was human like everyone else.

BAM!

Why were they so determined to treat him otherwise?

And another ball.

Fixing his eyes on the chalk figure, Kirihana seethed, picturing a face on the makeshift chalk head. It was the girl, it was An, it was Kamio, it was Fuji. WHOEVER. He hated them all equally. He hated _everyone _equally.

BAM!

Breathing heavily, he lowered his racket.

Was he just that unforgivable?

It was a while before he looked at the wall, remembering his original idea of practicing.

He looked at it, and stared, with pure, unabashed surprise.

All the scuffmarks were a good way away from the chalk figure.

Even that of the last serve.

In his sub-consciousness, even as he had pictured his enemies, he had aimed away.

He had aimed _away_.

With a sudden laugh, he drew out a fourth ball and began to rally, grinning all the while.

He wasn't a demon; he killer instinct was gone.

He wasn't a demon; he could no longer feel the malice.

He wasn't a demon.

He _wasn't_.

The hour left at the sight of him sprawled on the ground, his limbs outstretched and laughing his head off.

He'd thought being a monster had been fun. He'd thought mercilessly hurting others, exercising his unchallenged control over them, had been fun. Of course, now he felt sickened at the thought of his past self.

But he still hadn't known, until this moment, that being normal could feel so _good_.

He felt as though he had been cleansed of some kind of illness.

He was proud, gazing at the wall, of how after an hour of rallying, there wasn't a single scuffmark blemishing the chalk figure.

And he, finally, had some idea of what Sanada had been trying to tell him. The court was so big, and his opponent was so small. If he could look away from his opponents, look away from the breakable bones and focus on the court, the _game_…

His limit was gone. He could no longer see it.

And having no limit was _exhilarating_.

After a while, Kirihana's laughter finally died down to a simple smile.

There was a delicious sense of defiance within his heaving chest. He relished it, cherished it, that sense of being, for once, in the right.

It was not his problem now. Not _his_ demon that drove him to hurt, to destroy, to crush. That demon was gone.

Gone.

The demon--he chuckled at the irony of it--was in _them_. All those who still saw him as some kind of monster. The demon was in _them_, whispering into _their _hearts, telling them not to trust, not to forgive, not to allow him a chance to start over.

It told them that he was dangerous, and always would be. It told them that he could never change.

It told them, Kirihana reflected, to do things to him just as bad was what he had ever done to his opponents.

It had told him, once, to break their bodies.

It now told _them _to hate.

It told them to break his heart.

And he was pretty sure that hospitals couldn't do much for broken hearts.

But it wasn't his problem anymore. It was _their _demon, not his.

Their demon. He found that concept comforting.

_Their _demon.


End file.
